New 10% tariffs on Chinese imports include solar inverters and AC modules

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released a list of approximately $200 billion worth of Chinese imports that will be subject to additional tariffs. In accordance with the direction of President Trump, the additional tariffs will be effective starting September 24, 2018, and initially will be in the amount of 10%. The tariffs were set to rise to 25% on January 1, 2019, but further trade action was stalled until March to enable negotiations between China and the United States.

The list contains 5,745 full or partial lines of the original 6,031 tariff lines that were on a proposed list of Chinese imports announced on July 10, 2018. Changes to the proposed list were made after USTR and the interagency Section 301 Committee sought and received comments over a six-week period and testimony during a six-day public hearing in August. USTR engaged in a thorough process to rigorously examine the comments and testimony and, as a result, determined to fully or partially remove 297 tariff lines from the original proposed list. Included among the products removed from the proposed list are certain consumer electronics products such as smart watches and Bluetooth devices; certain chemical inputs for manufactured goods, textiles and agriculture; certain health and safety products such as bicycle helmets and child safety furniture such as car seats and playpens.

In March 2018, USTR released the findings of its exhaustive Section 301 investigation that found China’s acts, policies and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property and innovation are unreasonable and discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce.

About The Author

Kelsey Misbrener

Comments

Kelsey, can you specifically show the section saying that AC modules are subject to a 25% tariff? this seems a significant advantage to me for AC panels over separate DC panels and inverters if when imported separately, the DC panels are subject to a 30% tariff and inverters are subject to a 25% tariff. it effectively says that including a micro inverter on the back of the panel reduces the tariff on the panel portion of the combo from 30% to 25%.